#would swap out raisins for olives tho

[witchacademia]

frog bread recipe: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/frogbread

I made frog bread today and I've been lit jumping around them and petting them.

[shadsasaur]

hooooooooooo. ive got some

okay lets start with beef things we do regularly

KOREAN BEEF - very good, not much veggies in this but you can whip it together pretty fast and the flavour is great. have used ground chicken or turkey in it and its still been great

MEATED LOAF - i love this one. as written it says both ground beef and pork but weve swapped it for turkey no issues, and makes enough for leftovers the next day.

PICADILLO - im sorry i asked lex for his recipe and he gave me a png. the combination of beef, cinnamon and raisins is fun and pretty unique tho

if we move on from ground beef to stewing beef chunks, i would super recommend MEXICAN STEWED BEEF or HUNGARIAN GOULASH. both pretty straightforward.

for chicken. hm. i always love recommending CHICKEN AND HOT GRAPES because hot grapes makes me laugh and its better than youd think. made a CHICKEN PINEAPPLE MACARONI SALAD lately and loved it.

chicken adjacent but i fucking love this TURKEY TETRAZZINI and weve made it to impress people. make it pretty regularly. and if youve got sausages on hand, SAUSAGE AND BROCCOLINI ORZO is fairly easy and delicious and if you want to put a bit more effort in and go both chicken and chorizo. find some dang beef chorizo and make paella. lex kinda combines this and this, and if you ask him to elaborate:

he becomes the grandmother telling a novella on a recipe site

Notes:

Usually we have a full pound of chorizo and I only want a half pound, so I cook it first then put half away. If I had exactly as much as I needed I'd probably do more like the recipes where it goes in after veg. Maybe? But I often do it first then take it all out of the pan to cook the veg.

Usually we have pre-cooked chicken. Even so, it does help if you can brown it a little bit, gets it good and flavourful. If it were raw I'd probably pre-cook the chicken alone in the pan before the veg, just to be sure, paranoid about raw chicken.

I chop everything smaller than what it'll say. For me, food is good when the pieces are of a uniform size. Big chicken chunks and small chorizo bits makes it weird for me.

We don't eat seafood so I dunno when that goes in.

We use all basmati all the time, dunno what happens if you use rice that would take longer to cook or have different instructions.

Typically:

Fry chorizo (1/2 lb ish), remove from pan.

Brown up pre-cooked chicken chunks (1/2 lb ish?) in chorizo grease. Salt and pepper maybe garlic powder and paprika too if you're feeling bold. (If all the pieces of the food taste good, the food will taste good.) Remove from pan.

Olive oil if the pan needs it. Fry red pepper (like 3/4 or 1 pepper chopped up). If you're an onion eater, do it here too. Salt & pepper.

Add some olive oil, maybe 1/2 - 1 tbsp ish? I don't measure, just glug some out of the jug. It'll probably look too greasy, but the rice will soak it up in a second or something.

Add garlic and red pepper flakes, follow your heart on how much. Cook for a minute or two, but don't burn the garlic. The goal is to make good tasting olive oil to go into the rice.

I think somehwere around here I probably put the chorizo and chicken back in. It's all cooked, just stirring stuff together I guess.

Add the rice. (1/2 cup) No juice yet. Just stir the rice around in the oil for a few minutes. Don't let the rice stick to the pan, that'll suck. If you need more oil to keep that from happening, go for it. Shouldn't be pools of oil lying about though, just enough that it doesn't stick, the rice should pretty much suck it up, I guess.

Juice goes in now. (1 1/2 cups - more than what rice calls for on the bag, but without a lid on there I find it needs that) Last time I used water + veggie soup base + concentrated chicken stock. But any good tasting stock would probably work here. Maybe not beef, but chicken or veggie.

Saffron, bay leaves, some thyme (fresh, dried, whatever). Salt and pepper to taste.

Cook uncovered until rice is cooked. Stir it lots.

At the end, if it starts to look dry or stick too much to the pan on the bottom and the rice isn't done yet, add more water or stock. Usually this does happen to me and usually I add ~1/4 - 1/2 cup extra juice here. This is around when I add the frozen peas (1/2 cup ish?) too. Usually turn it down quite low and start paying better attention and stirring lots here too to avoid sticking/burning.

When the rice is soft and there's no juice left in the pan, eat it. If the rice is done but it's still wet, just cook it until it's not actively wet anymore. But not dry enough that the rice gets weird and crispy, just don't want juice pooling around when you're trying to scoop it all up.

Tell me about meats, please.

I feel like I’m in a cooking rut. I learned to cook with chicken breasts, ground beef and fish filets. I’ve branched out to sausages and stew beef and shrimps. Anyone got any good recipes that use those ingredients in an “unexpected/possibly new to someone whose culinary repertoire is very American” way?

I’ve never really cooked with or eaten much of anything else. I know there’s more out there. I don’t eat pork but am happy to cook it for my partner with a hearty side for me. I live near some good Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese groceries.

Anyone got any dishes, recipes, ingredients, or other suggestions for me? Bloggers I should check out?What are some of your go-to meat dishes?